Followingly Merissa and Clare had a hard time believing that Luxario was alive. It took a lot of convincing and apologies from his side to make them understand that he was really alive and not an imposter. Even after showing his protector crystal, they interrogated him thoroughly to check if it was really him. After a lot of difficulty, they finally came to believe that he was truly alive and breathing in front of him. The people passing by ignored the oddly behaving group with a few glances.

None of them recognized Luxario. This didn’t go unnoticed by Alex.

“Say, if you’re really such an important person and all why isn’t no one recognizing your face? Do they not teach history in schools here?” Alex asked looking around.

‘It’s not that they don’t recognize it, it’s just that he doesn’t appear to them the same way he does to you.’ Miracle answered.

‘Huh? What do you mean?’

Before Miracle could answer, Luxario smiled and leaned forward towards Alex.

“Well, they can’t really recognize me, if they can’t see my real face now, can they?” Luxario said as midway, his bearded face got turned into a clean shaved face with different facial features and blonde hair instead of the black and grey.

Alex looked around but no seemed to notice this strange phenomenon with Luxario’s face.

Miracle, ‘Illusion Magic.’

Merissa wanted to wait and chat but there wasn’t enough time, Alex and Nina had to be at school so she left with them. Clare and Rose on the other hand took Luxario to meet Augustus.

…

After lunch Nina and Alex came out in the soccer ground for a little walk. They discussed a bit about what they did at Emerald. Merissa had bought some kit for Nina to focus on her training but they had also shopped quite a lot along with Clare as Alex had suspected. He noticed; Nina appeared really happy while sharing to him about her day which wasn’t usual back in the day before she got involved in this new world.

This wasn’t to say that she was unhappy before but now it seemed she had more reasons to be happy.

‘Looks like she found someone to openly share her thoughts with.’ Alex observed. He knew how much Nina remained reserved except with her friends. But now it appeared to him like she was getting along well with Merissa.

After a while of chatter, Nina suddenly became a bit serious.

“Alex, you know that you can count on me to help you right? I mean if something tries to…” Nina said with determination as she looked at him. She was already aware of his deal with Luxario and his reason for doing it.

‘Heh… will you look at her talk now? Just yesterday she was crying like a little insect. I don’t think I could ever get you humans.’ Miracle commented.

Alex shook at Miracle’s response internally.

“Of course, I was going to bribe you with a large Ferrero Rocher to act as my bodyguard since you can use that cool ice magic and stuff but it looks like I don’t need to anymore.” Alex teased with a wide grin.

“Were you now? I don’t know my protection fee is quite steep you know.” Nina said with a smirk as she made gestures of rubbing both of her shoulders trying to up her bargain. A moment later the two, burst into laughter.

The next few days went by with Alex and Nina going out after school to Merissa’s hideout. From there Luxario would meet with Alex and they would train regularly. Alex was still attending his martial arts class. Luxario was also teaching him some hand-to-hand combat techniques. The main reason why Alex was managing between both of them was because he couldn’t just back out now and leave Nova hanging.

Moreover, the only reason Alex was able to survive after going through the grueling near-death training by the eccentric man, was that he gave him some potion to drink which tasted bitter but recovered his fatigue miraculously. Although it wasn’t fully effective it was still enough for him to attend his martial arts class afterwards. Even Luxario pushed him to attend his classes as it was still training. With that Alex worked his way to become stronger.

…

Times seemed peaceful until one day…

Alex, Nina and Nova had stayed back after classes to study.

“No! I keep telling you, you need to take out the square root and then apply the formula.” Nina said as she corrected Nova. It was 6:30 in the evening and they were almost winding up.

“Hah… I am tired. The assignments aside, we have internals now. We also have the sports day and inter school competitions coming up. I don’t think I can live that long.”

“Quite the drama, since you have decided to ask my help to do better on algebra, there’s no backing now.” Nina reprimanded.

“Yeah, yeah… by the way these events, doesn’t the principal arrange for them?” Nova asked as he stood up straight from his slouched position on the chair.

“Yeah… come to think of it, I haven’t seen him around lately.” Alex shared.

“I had heard, he had gone to attend some urgent board matter, beats me.” Nina shrugged.

As they were preparing to leave the second floor, they heard some loud noise of seats falling over from the above floor.

“Could someone has fallen?” Nova asked.

Alex shrugged.

Curious, they decided to go check it out. There weren’t as many classrooms on the third floor as there were different departments. Nova took a left corridor and checked the rooms while Alex and Nina searched the main corridor.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

Alex had walked to the far end of the resource department. But there was no one there. He opened the door to the resource department but found nothing. He was reminded of the time when he first came here and discovered the claw marks. Where all the craziness started.

‘A zone spell’s been activated!’ Miracle warned.

Alert, Alex called for the others.

“Nina! Where’s Nova?!” Alex shouted.

“He—

“AAHHH!!”

Nina who was on the other end was about to reply when they heard Nova’s scream. The two rushed over only to find Nova knocked out!